Fertility fraud; or How to have lots of great grandchildren

A (now deceased) Dutch IVF doctor is presently being accused of having substituted his clients’ sperm with his own a large number of times. This has allegedly resulted in 22 children being conceived in the 1980s via imposter sperm, and who were then brought up by men other than their families in the manner of a cuckoo (“brood parasitism”). DNA tests are currently being arranged in order to confirm this.

There are two main things which I find interesting about this. This first is that we’re now in the situation where some of the children are considering taking legal action against the estate of the doctor in question. Their main concern is of “wrongful birth”; which is to say that living humans are suing the estate of a dead man because they claim that they shouldn’t exist. It sounds like a language puzzle.

The second interesting thing is that from an evolutionary perspective, this doctor has been spectacularly successful. Few men father 22 children in any “natural” context, so already he’s doing better than most. Wrongfully born these children may be, but I rather doubt that it will stop them having children and living their lives like other people. IVF fraud may be one of the most successful evolutionary strategies currently available in our society.